Travis would admit to more than a little satisfaction at seeing his brother burning alive. It was even more gratifying to see the threads of Stitch burning alongside him. Figuring he could get away with it, Travis stabbed out with his energy blade as Erik fell to the ground, writhing and on fire. Without Stitch to help him dodge, the edge slid right through his sternum.

That was all he could do before the goo finished burning. He saw yellow and green light flare as Erik’s burns and stab wound rapidly disappeared. Rather than try for another hit, Travis backed off. He’d learned his lesson about jumping in without thinking already. For now, he had a solid method for dealing with both of his brother’s shrouds, so that would have to be enough in the meantime.

Actually, Travis was feeling proud of himself for thinking of the purple goo. It was one of a myriad of weapons he could have chosen, and he was glad his first try worked so well. He was expecting to run through several weapons before finding one that would actually work.

The purple goo was actually a byproduct of the miniaturized ether engine powering the Model 853. The Founder had found a way to process it further into a sort of afterburner that could allow the suit’s flight systems to produce rapid bursts of speed for a short period. In fact, it was this feature that Travis had used for his initial attack on Erik.

But the Founder had also recognized the dangerous potential of the goo to act as a weapon. So the armor held a portion of it in reserve at all times, ready to be dispensed when necessary. It was then triggered by a sonic register beyond human hearing that caused it to ignite. The byproduct burned at a high temperature, but didn’t last very long, which was its real shortcoming as a weapon. It only lasted for a brief period. However, since it was a byproduct of ether interactions, Travis had an infinite supply of the stuff, unlike the explosive disk he’d used earlier.

Even though he’d backed off, Travis saw no reason to let up his attack. If he could trap Erik in a damage loop he couldn’t easily avoid, he would be able to drain his brother’s shroud reserves without putting himself in much danger. With that in mind, he fired off another force blast at Erik’s head, hoping to start another chain.

Instead, he frowned as Stitch strands pulled his brother out of the way at the last moment. Travis hadn’t expected Erik to be able to switch splinters that fast, he’d have to rethink his timing if he was going to pull this off. Still, he had the initiative and momentum right now, time to capitalize on it.

{}

Erik felt the flash of danger as another force blast streaked toward his head. But at that point he was already halfway through switching domains. He’d actually started to switch before his injuries were completely healed specifically because he could feel the revolutionary’s growing intent to attack. Erik had pushed Healing to deal with the damage Stitch couldn’t first, so that he could switch and let Stitch deal with the rest while regaining his mobility.

It wasn’t hard to see that Erik was in a bad situation. He was more than a little surprised that his opponent had managed to come up with a counter to Stitch so fast. Maybe he’d just gotten unlucky, but it was still a problem. The armored-up revolutionary had already figured out how to render Erik harmless when he was using Healing, and that purple goo was a pretty great counter to Stitch.

“Ok, looks like I have to take this more seriously,” Erik muttered, flexing every muscle in his body as his shroud infused all of them. He was really starting to miss Binding right about now. But he wasn’t yet at the point where he thought he might lose without it. So long as he thought he could pull out a win with what he had, Erik wasn’t going to drop that barrier. He didn’t want to see what Lily would do to him for leaving those people unprotected.

And that meant he was stuck trying to think his way out of this. Erik hated tactical crap and would much rather just have a good old knock-down drag-out fist fight. But his opponent didn’t seem to agree. Probably because they’d definitely lose. He couldn’t exactly fault them for avoiding a definite loss, but he still found it annoying.

Despite knowing he’d been maneuvered, Erik still couldn’t think up a good plan. Just trying to figure out some sort of thoughtful solution gave him a headache. He dodged several more force blasts and switched domains again to deal with the burn damage from the cone of goo that did catch him. The whole time he was trying to think his way out of this, but nothing came to him.

It was even worse that the revolutionary had gotten super twitchy. Any time Erik even tried to close the distance he disappeared, using the armor’s flight to disengage in a way that Erik couldn’t really punish. The ethertech managed to close the gap in skill once you added in their user’s total countering of Erik’s abilities.

Finally, after getting soaked in goo again, Erik abandoned any kind of well-thought plan. That wasn’t him. Sure his opponent seemed comfortable thinking their way out of a fight, but Erik wasn’t built like that. Plus, he was getting real tired of restoring his clothes to avoid fighting in the nude. Instead, he decided to double down on his strengths. Namely, melee skills and overwhelming raw power.

Now he needed to wait for an opening, an opportunity to use what he hadn’t this entire fight, martial arts. Admittedly, he hadn’t seen an opening to do so the whole time, or he would have already. But now he was actively hunting for that perfect moment to flip the tables. It wasn’t as hard as he thought, since he was already running and dodging all over the place to avoid getting his head splattered for the hundredth time.

Finally, it came. Erik stepped in, planning to charge his attacker and close the distance enough to use a martial art, only to have the revolutionary jump straight up in the air. This was nothing new, except for one factor. They hadn’t activated their armor’s flight. Erik could tell just from the way they were falling, the arc of their jump. They’d grown complacent with Erik’s attempts and hadn’t bothered.

To be fair, Erik realized that, based on everything he’d done so far, that jump would have moved them out of his path and into safety. But Erik hadn’t shown everything he could do. And that was going to cost them. Erik hadn’t spent as much time working with Stitch as he had Binding, but he’d made strides in his martial arts with both.

{Spring Step}

Erik shot through the air, trailing broken strands that had split under tension. Midair, he stepped down hard as a platform of strands formed before he kicked off, propelled forward even faster. It took only a moment to close the distance midair. Eriki could tell that the revolutionary had kicked on his flight, but it was too late.

Instead of a punch, Erik open-palmed gripped the arm of his opponent, twisting them around and whipping them over his body in a throw. But at the same time, tens of thousands of strands rapidly swirled around the armored figure.

{Strait-Jacket}

That one was fun for Erik, since he could actually trigger it a number of ways. It would have been even more satisfying if he could have watched his bound enemy slam into the ground, but wrapping them up didn’t affect their ability to fly, so they stopped in midair. Of course, that just offered up a juicy target for Erik, still in the air above them.

{Spring Slam}

He barely made it in time. Erik could see strands breaking even as he slammed both fists down in an overhead plow right into the revolutionary’s armored back. The strands surrounding his arms burst apart as the force surged into his target, blasting them down to slam into the ground, rubble and earth cracking under the impact.

That was the problem with chaining martial arts. Unless you were prepared to do so, the wind-up made them difficult to link without giving the opponent time to escape. Erik was ready to link his Spring Step in a Strait-Jacket, but hadn’t thought about the flight tech in the suit and wasn’t ready for the Spring Slam. It nearly let the revolutionary escape.

But the benefits were obvious, as Erik’s uninjured arms would attest. If he’d tried to use a similar mnemonic, he would have at least broken both arms. But by tying atmospheric, unaligned Ki into the marital art, he could avoid that problem.

But there wasn’t another appropriate martial art he could use fast enough as the revolutionary’s energy blade started to cut through the strands holding them. And Erik wasn’t willing to let them fall back into the same pattern all over again. He was done with this fight, one way or another.

Stitch wrapped around one of his legs as it blurred, throwing Erik down after his opponent, who was still recovering on the ground. He grinned through the broken bones grinding in his leg as he aimed a Stitch-wrapped elbow at the center of an armored and nearly-free back.

CRACK

Erik rolled, switching domains even as he did while the shattered remains of his arm and leg flopped around painfully. Healing flooded his body and got him on his feet long before the revolutionary. In fact, Erik was pretty sure that last blow had stunned them somehow, even if his elbow drop hadn’t done much damage. He hadn’t put nearly as much force into it as he had with his first punch. He still had an arm after all.

That being said, there was some obvious damage to the dark plating along the armor’s spine. Something Erik planned to exploit even as white light began to glow and repair the damage. Erik dove down, kneeling by the stunned revolutionary’s side as he jammed his nails into the gaps in the armor he’d made while switching domains again.

Once his fingers had weaseled and jammed in properly, bands of Stitch spread out all across his arms, the armor, and the surrounding ground. Then, all the stitches began to pull, trying to draw everything toward each other, stitching them together. The tension grew and grew, digging Erik’s finger’s even deeper in.

“C’mon,” Erik grunted, feeling his fingers start to bend and reinforcing them with more Stitch. “I said I was going to peel you out of this damn thing and I meant it.”

Erik could feel the revolutionary finally wake up from their fugue, as their hands started to move, but he’d bound those as tightly as anything else. They wouldn’t break out fast. This wasn’t a martial art meant to momentarily trap an opponent. Erik had layered strands on top of each other, intent on pinning them for as long as he could.

“You’d be better off just opening this thing up already.” Erik laughed. “You know I’m going to win at this point. I’m just a better fighter than you. Might as well make it easier on yourself.”

Surprisingly, that got a reaction. And not the one that he’d expected. Both himself and the revolutionary were ripped from the ground as they triggered the armor’s flight ether at full power, flinging them both in the air. But Erik was still tied into the armor with his shroud, still pulling it apart.

That was when the armor started to spin.

Faster and faster, in tighter and tighter circles until it was literally rotating in place, the armor spun. Erik held on, tied himself even tighter. He even tried to keep the revolutionary bound so that they couldn’t attack him. Eventually, those bindings failed as Erik had to devote more and more effort to keeping himself attached.

The spinning continued to accelerate with no sign of stopping. Until, suddenly, it did. The spin came to a complete and total stop in an instant. All that momentum slammed into Erik like an ethership going full speed, and his strand broke. All of them, at once. Erik was flung away faster than he’d ever moved unassisted by an ethership.

Knowing this wasn’t going to end well for him, Erik switched domains. Before he hit the ground, Healing started to repair his hands, within which was clutched a sizable chunk of armor. It had been ripped off when he was, the momentum enough to finally surpass the material’s impressive durability.

After his shroud handled the myriad broken bones, ripped flesh, and other injures he accumulated skipping across and slamming into the rubble-strewn ground, Erik hardly had a moment to think, because the revolutionary had followed him, and they weren’t letting up.

Bobbing and weaving, Erik managed to avoid several wild swings and sudden force blasts. He healed his way through a splash of purple goo and kept moving. More and more attacks, many he’d never seen yet, were thrown his way as his opponent seemed to go completely wild.

“You’re not better than me! You were never better than me!” A voice screamed from the armor. “I was always better than you, and no one believed it! But now they do! I’ve gone farther than you could imagine, achieved things you wouldn’t believe! I planned this whole attack, I started this onslaught! And now I’m going to end you!”

Erik was confused, both because he didn’t understand what the revolutionary was saying, and also because that voice was weirdly familiar. Someone he knew, but hadn’t heard in a while. Someone he knew…

His eyes widened in surprise. He stopped dodging, catching an energy-bladed arm by the elbow and stopping the blow. There was no way, but he knew that voice. Of course he knew it.

“Travis, is that you?”